Some of the protesting done before and during the Senate hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Tuesday was elaborately orchestrated by activists. Although the mock “Handmaids” who showed up for one vivid display presumably had their costumes already (and have probably worn them before, in numerous venues), they did have to don their attire and make prior arrangements.

(Senator Ted Cruz, R-TX, demolished the Democrats’ talking point that relevant documentation had somehow been withheld on Kavanaugh. The documents that have been withheld weren’t even Kavanaugh’s writings; they were the writings of other officials, from the George W. Bush presidency. They have nothing to do with controversial judicial issues or these hearings.)

High-profile activists like Linda Sarsour, meanwhile, who stood up and started hollering as the hearing kicked off, had also obviously arranged to be present and execute a prior plan. (For more on Sarsour’s public-spirited political profile, see here.)

But then there were the aspiring impromptu “protesters” encountered by three doctors visiting from Texas. The doctors, who stood in line with them outside, told interviewer Adam Schindler that they witnessed organized activists with a literal bag of cash paying the rent-a-mob to shriek, act out, and disrupt the hearing.

Real Clear Politics has a transcript of the doctors’ comments as offered to Schindler.

TOM SCHLUETER, TEXAS: Hello, I’m Dr. Tom Schlueter from Texas, we came here to participate in the hearings, to get in the line. They told us to be here at 8:00, 8:30 at the latest, to get in line to go inside and hear the hearings. We got here at about 8:15 and there was already 100 people in line, and most of them would be probably classified by me as ‘opposing everything going on with Judge Kavanaugh,’ and so we began to see a process of things unfolding as we were standing in line that kept the line from going ahead.

One thing was there were people who had come along… who had a bag of money, and people would hand them a piece of paper, and then they would give them money. So we know money was exchanged for some of the people to be here, just to protest.

There was no depth to what their understanding, they were just here to be a disruption, protesters. They were actually told, we heard them say this, ‘when you go in, we want you to yell, to scream, and even possibly to get arrested.’ So that was some of the processes we saw happening…

Based on this summary, with its detail about the pieces of paper being submitted by folks in the crowd, it sounds like there was a solicitation of some kind that these people were responding to. A casting call, as it were: show up at the Kavanaugh hearings venue and we’ll pay you to riot.

The most telling thing was listening to them giving names and addresses, so when they were arrested, they were keeping a record and celebrating who got arrested, without any regard for any open discussion or even the possibility of being convinced of anything, it was just for the purpose of disruption and to have some kind of disruption of the process.

Apparently Linda Sarsour didn’t have to cool her heels in the clink for very long.

To hear all the caterwauling, you’d never guess that Brett Kavanaugh received the decidedly non-rightist American Bar Association’s highest endorsement last week (“well qualified”), along with others like the ones here and here. You’d almost think the Senate Democrats and left-wing activists were just trying to stage an extended public tantrum to get attention.

Promoting and defending liberty, as defined by the nation’s founders, requires both facts and philosophical thought, transcending all elements of our culture, from partisan politics to social issues, the workings of government, and entertainment and off-duty interests. Liberty Unyielding is committed to bringing together voices that will fuel the flame of liberty, with a dialogue that is lively and informative.